Ben Lynch: And now as we go through our next recruitment, oh, FYI, we are recruiting for a consultant, a coach here at Clinic Mastery. If you fancy yourself as joining a high-performing team like the Clinic Mastery team, reach out. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode.

Jack O'Brien: You can't just accidentally lose culture. You can just catch a cold, happens miraculously. You can't just miraculously lose culture. The standards we walk past become the new standards. Would you add them to your DM group chat? That is a really interesting cultural litmus test.

Ben Lynch: Recruitment is such a key activity for clinic owners. It's one of those things that you need to perpetually have in your diary.

Jack O'Brien: Let fear be the signal for proactive development of your culture. I think that's a really key lesson for clinic owners.

Ben Lynch: All right, well, good to be back, JOB. I've had a week of leave. Hey, you're aware on the Newcastle Knights, they got close, they didn't get over the line, but what a great game.

Jack O'Brien: Some people say we missed out on the fairytale. I say we got our fairytale. We made it to the grand final and the buzz and the atmosphere was just electric. Didn't happen, this wasn't our year, but we can come back and do it all again next year.

Ben Lynch: be plenty of fun. Well, two good grand finals, the AFL and NRL grand final, going to the wire. We're looking forward to that. I guess it's kind of started with South African tour, but- Oh, it has started.

Jack O'Brien: I sent you a reel this morning. Marnus Labershain is up and about chirping away. Some people say there's cicadas or kids playing in the streets. The sound of summer is Marnus Labershain having a go at the batters. It's wonderful to hear.

Ben Lynch: Well, it might not be there for much longer because he's battling. 37's enough. Hey, I'm really interested to unpack today culture, and we've had a number of clinic owners say to us, hey, I'm growing quickly, and I've just got this fear of losing the culture. I've got this fear of losing the connection that I have with my team. Perhaps it's a smaller team, we're growing quickly, and I just want to preserve that awesomeness that is today. So I want to unpack that with you, look at how we diagnose it, some of the solutions that we'd have in reaction to some events, but also some proactive things that you'd look to install. Before we go there, really important update for members on the 22nd of October, we have our online summit where we're talking about and helping you install the system to pair practitioner performance with pay. We're seeing a lot of clinic owners questioning the sustainability of their private practice right now with third-party payers, example NDIS, squeezing with the award changing, clinic owners getting caught in the middle of this, especially financially, and asking the question, is it worth it? But perhaps the better question is, how do I make it worth it? And one of the most important things is how you pair performance and pay for practitioners. So we're going to install a new system for clinic owners, members only, so make sure you're registered for that. What have you got on your radar there, Jod?

Jack O'Brien: Look, it's interesting because it's a squeezing time for a lot of clinic owners. And so what we're finding is that the best clinic owners are reaching out for help and using this time to double down and invest in their own personal growth and their clinic growth. So I want to welcome, quick shout out to a bunch of clinic owners. Jayden has joined us in Elevate. Anthony's joined us in Elevate. Dwight has joined us in the Business Academy. In fact, there's a large Central Coast of New South Wales contingent. Just fun fact, this week's trend is Central Coast New South Wales. Ellie's joined us in the Business Academy. Alex joined us in Elevate. Nicole has graduated from Elevate to the Business Academy. Her clinic is growing in regional remote Australia. So, go, Nicole. There's plenty happening, Ben. So, that's happening. Our summit, These tickets are flying off the shelves, the virtual shelves, and so if you want to know anything about joining our programs, maybe you need help to fill your books, you need to grow your team, you're looking at recruiting, or you need to grow the people that you've already got, you need to optimize your cash flow, you want to join us for the summit, anything you need. If you want to talk to me about coffee, I'm drinking an Ethiopian natural today. If anything you need, just come and join me in my inbox, jack@clinicmastery.com. That is jack@clinicmastery.com. I might be able to hook you up with an enrolment, a little sweetener. I might be able to help you out with Allie. I might be able to help you out with a summer ticket. Who knows? What's going on in Allie, Ben? There's a bit of movement on the Allie front.

Ben Lynch: What's amusing inside? we are removing the administrative burden of compliance. Yes, the most boring, but perhaps the most riskiest part of your clinic with some big changes to compliance tracking and compliance set up for your team. So that's evolved. Also, we've made mentoring sessions so much easier to do because Allie analyses the data for you and gives you So, the recommendations for how to handle that mentoring session, prescriptions on actions to take, it just makes the whole mentoring flow so much easier. So, go check that out. There you go. Hey, one more, one more.

Jack O'Brien: Well, one more before you segue. Hang on. One more. Just slow down a little bit. Just chill out. It's okay. There's a long list here. We've got to get through it. Hey, just a quick poll, folks. Come and join us in the Spotify comments. If you're listening to this, maybe you're walking, you're at the gym or driving, pull over. Join us in the comments. I've got to know. I've got a question for you that I need some feedback. I'm not going to do this unless I get a substantial number of Spotify comments. We are, we're testing the waters with good coffee for the good people of Clinic Mastery. And so if you want Clinic Mastery coffee, if you want good coffee for the good people of Clinic Mastery, let me know in the comments. Give me some feedback if you, how you like your coffee, what's your coffee order, what's your favourite bean, like give me some, give me some coffee comments and we may just bring good coffee for the good people of Clinic Mastery. So there you go. Join us in the comments.

Ben Lynch: this is either going to flourish or hurt our egos massively, Joby, because we pride ourselves on our coffee.

Jack O'Brien: The reality has been, we're going to do coffee. It's just whether it's you and me or other people.

Ben Lynch: We're going to just keep drinking. We're going to keep drinking, that's for sure. So let's go to culture. There are many different ways to approach this, and we've discussed them a number of times with Bec, Mic, and Sara from the People plugin, we've discussed it ourselves. And it can kind of seem like this big fuzzy thing, very subjective thing, culture. But we hear clinic owners say, hey, we're growing, we're adding a new site, or we're added a whole bunch of new team members. And the culture that is, is like, it's really good. I'm proud of it. I've spent a lot of time curating it and making it so I'm concerned that it's not going to flow through to the next site or the subsequent team members, and I want to find a way to preserve that culture. I'm scared of losing it. When you've had this come up, J.I.B., I've had it many times over the last 10 years that we've been doing this. How do we go about it? Let's break it down. That clinic owner's in front of us right now. How are we going to help solve that problem, answer that question for them?

Jack O'Brien: So probably the first thing that comes to mind, and I mean this with good intent, but it's like you can't just accidentally lose culture. Like, you know, you can't just, like, lose it. Like, you can't just catch a cold, happens miraculously. You can't just miraculously lose culture. So where does this uncertainty or fear come from? Maybe there's, you know, dynamics or changes in the clinic and you think, well, with change, maybe the culture will change. But culture will change because you have deliberately actively changed it or actively neglected it. But either way, it's active. I don't know.

Ben Lynch: What do you think? Do you agree with that? Well, so part of them asking that question is a good signal that they're actively thinking about it. How do I preserve it? So you're in the right place if you're already asking that question, which is really good. The, the thing that I really loved from Sara, from the people plug in our HR partner, she said, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what culture is across different organizations. Some people say we have good culture. Some say we have bad culture and you know, what, what do they actually mean when they say that? And her answer after doing a lot of work on that was that what they're actually referring to are standards. what are the standards we have or that we accept, not the ones that we say we have, but that we actually accept or, you know, quote unquote, the standards we walk past become the new standards. There's that beautiful quote there that I'm not sure where it comes from, but it's one we've referenced a lot. And it's like, what are the standards we have for how we prepare for our next patient, the new patient? What are the standards we have around CPD? What are some of the standards we have around the way that we communicate and work with one another? What are some of the standards we have about how active we are at filling our own books and generating our own new clients? So I think When you think about it from that perspective, I feel like it becomes less subjective and enters more the objective realm where we can say, we can start to actually say, these are the expectations we have and we can measure how we're actually going versus what we say we want. So I would start there by sort of framing that up and say, what are some of the things that you feel you're doing really well right now? or that are characteristic of the culture that you're referring to at the moment. Because I think that's really important to understand what they mean when they say, my culture is really good, or I want to preserve what's happening right now. So let's start there with a reflection. I think that's really important.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, because we've got to define what our culture is. And I love the standards perspective. I think probably standards can be extended to go, what are the behaviours that we do or don't accept? And so, and when I say behaviours, we're often talking about habits or routines or rituals. And so, you know, a lot of people might associate culture with how relaxed we are as a team or how performance oriented we are as a team. And so, you know, when we think about losing culture, what you're actually describing is changing your behaviours. Maybe you're changing the behaviours that you accept, i.e. standards, or we're changing the behaviours that are normal. You know, what used to be quite jovial and friendly, we end up dropping some of that relational glue that holds us together because we've become more distracted or focused on other things. So it's standards and it's behaviours that we're willing to accept ultimately.

Ben Lynch: So part of the fear comes from, you know, the clinic owner knows everyone on the team. They know their story. They've probably been the one to recruit them, all of them. And perhaps they're getting to that point where they're now allowing someone else to take over the recruitment or at least part of it. And so that connection, even from the very beginning, is starting to get more distant for them. So part of this, we often talk about is systems or standards, like what are the standards that we're going to use through this process so that we find, you know, in this example, the next best person to join the team. You know, on that point, as time has progressed in my own experience and mistakes, the humbling experiences, but also seeing other clinic owners over the last decade, I just cannot stress enough how important recruitment actually is to culture. It's like, so many subsequent problems are prevented, solved, by actually bringing on someone that adds to the culture, that raises the bar, that at least upholds the bar of the standards as soon as they walk in. And so the standards we actually have around recruitment, onboarding, and training are just like so, so important for the future of your business. So I think if this clinic owner is in this situation going, we're growing, we're growing rapidly, and I'm scared about the culture side of things. It just lasers in for me on the recruitment process that they have and how important that is.

Jack O'Brien: So when you say that, what do you mean specifically in the recruitment context? Are we talking the type of person or their personality or their strengths? What do you mean?

Ben Lynch: It's a great point. point, I would go straight to the systems and the process side of things for, firstly, how do we even attract more of the right people? What are we actually putting out in some of our marketing, our career pages, our partnerships to attract interest and first-grade awareness that we even exist? Because you've got to get on the radar of people first. You want the biggest catchment of folks so that you've got more opportunities to find the right person in that cohort. Then I want to look at, okay, what is the structure for actually screening people? We often talk about different things we'll put in job ads, different requirements for perhaps people to send in a video submission or do something a little bit extra that we've put in the job ad to show their attention to detail as an example. Let's say a really important thing for us is They pay attention to the details and they follow through on the details, okay? Let's say that's really important to our culture. And so, we'll change some of the process in an attempt to identify people who will follow the detail. And it always becomes very clear those folks that come through the process who's not a fit early on. Now, you still might bring them through that pipeline and get them to go through more steps. But what I see clinic owners do is they'll start to remove some of those things that they did in their process early on. especially when they hand it over to somebody else to take that recruitment process, they don't make it clear how integral some of the steps or how intentional some of the steps have been in the past. So like, it's okay, we won't get people to submit a video as part of their application to make it stand out. Now it's not necessary, but to make it stand out, that's okay. And they just slowly remove some of these pieces that are actually intentional and integral to the whole process. So I'd jump straight into the process and I'd say, I'd be interested in your perspective here, J.O.B. I think the owner needs to be involved in recruitment for a long period of time because it is such an integral piece to culture. Perhaps you're involved in recruitment all the way through until maybe you're at 30 plus team members. Which is, for a lot of clinic owners, they're not involved, sorry, they're not going to reach that level for a long period of time. You might have someone getting to the point where there's a short list of three to five folks and then you're stepping in. But I think it's just so important. Owners need to be part of that. What do you think to the process of recruitment and how it relates to preserving or adding to the culture?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, certainly recruitment must add to the culture. I think it was Henry Ford, and we're not necessarily proposing this, but Henry Ford infamously would fire or terminate the lowest 10% of performers at the Ford factories and replace it with the top 10%. It would hire high performers and get rid of low performers. Of course, that accretes over time. The principle stands when we hire people, we need them to be culture accretive. We need them to add something. We don't just want the status quo, we want to lift the bar. So that becomes really critical. Something that you've personally challenged me on a lot is trying to quantify or objectify some of these things. When we say a person is culture accretive, what specific criteria are we talking about? Are they a high energy, high output, you know, are they a hustler? Is it that or is it that they're a people person, they bring this energy and vibrancy to the conversation or do they have a sense of humour that aligns, you know, so much? A good little, you know, we talk about the pub test, right? Would you enjoy having a beer with them? But for clinic owners, and this may seem a little you know, edgy, but it's a really good test. Like, would you add them to your DM group chat? You know, would you enjoy their personality? Would they have a similar sense of humour and a similar work view? Now, of course, there's room for diversity, all of those things, but ultimately, this is what we talk about when we talk about culture. You know, so would they fit in the group chat? That is a really interesting cultural litmus test. Do they bring a standard or have they been around standards that would fit in well? with us. So, I think clinic owners, and maybe you can speak more to it, Benny, like really objectifying, i.e., quantifying what are the specific traits or the specific behaviours.

Ben Lynch: I'm going to pull up a few examples, but can you speak to that a little bit? One of the exercises I love doing is, and we literally did this the other day internally, We had two Slack threads, you can do it on Undocument, and we literally said, okay, what were the things that worked really well last time we recruited? What were the things that did not work last time? And how can this time add a layer of system or process or filtering to avoid or minimize the things that didn't work? And so I come back to what are the characteristics you absolutely don't want? And usually you've had a team member or you've got a team member that is just not a fit for several reasons. And I would want you to just to clarify what those things are. You know, maybe they don't take initiative. Maybe they're always blaming other people. Maybe they run late. Like, okay, Let's pull those things out in a list and then just say, in my next batch of recruitment, what questions might I ask? What activities might I do to try and see if I can identify some of these characteristics or behaviours? Now, some people going through the interview process. are going to be nervous. Maybe you're nervous as the clinic owner as well. They're going to shop a little bit different. Maybe they're a little bit more performative because they're trying to get the job. So, of course, those things play a role. Therefore, I think it further emphasizes how can we try and get a structure in place that does this fairly across the board to all applicants but allows it to be repeatable and try and bring to the surface the things that we want and identify the things we don't want. Uh, so that's that we've literally did that process like two days ago internally. And now as we go through our next recruitment, Oh, FYI, we should have put this at the top of the episode. We are recruiting for a consultant, a coach here at Clinic Mastery. If, uh, you fancy yourself as joining a high performing team, like the Clinic Mastery team. Reach out, you can send an email to andrewatclickmastery.com. We have the job ad up on Seek, but reach out with your application. We'd love to hear and see it come through. Where we're getting to here JOB is a clinic owner that says, Hey, we're growing, we're expanding. Culture is really important. I want to, I want to create an amazing place to work. I think what we've got at the moment, pretty good. How do I preserve that? Maintain that, especially when I'm not going to be so close to the team members or the locations, or maybe you're running a remote clinic. And so we're looking at standards. What are the standards? I think very practically they need to be documented. Often you might go to, what are our core values? Cool, that's helpful. But even right down to, does every team member know their role? Do they have a clear position description? Do they have a clear set of outcomes or KPIs that they're meant to hit? Do we actually have in our diary a rhythm where we're going to review those things? Expectations versus actual. That's part of upholding the standards that we have around, say, the clinical care side of things. So I think we come back to, is it written? And do we have a commitment in our diary to review actual versus expectations? Really simple, but really helpful, this kind of doing these things regularly over a long period of time. So you're going to show something.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I'm going to share my screen. There's a couple of examples. And when we say being specific, it might be specific behaviours or it might be specific words and things that resonate uniquely with you and your culture. Now, if we have a look here, let's make sure that the share screen can work. But if we have a look here, Benny, can you see the Fixio health page here? You can. Are you the legend we're looking for if you're a good human? By the way, if you're listening to this, come and join us on YouTube. Or, if you want the video podcast on Spotify, let us know in the comments. We're actually tossing up whether we put this podcast as video on Spotify. So, we'll do that if one person asks for it, we'll do it. Just be the one. Just be the one, that's right. So at Fixeo, they talk about being a good human and a legend and you grind in your pursuit. And so it's like specific wording that will resonate with the right people and repel the wrong people. And so this sets the pace, right? Are you growth minded and a proven track record and you see the funnier side of life, you don't take yourself too seriously. These are really key criteria for the culture at Fixeo. I love also what Andrew Daubny and the team at Rebound Health have done here. Actually, on their Join Our Team page, they've got here, let me just share this tab. There we go. Rebound Health across Sydney's northern beaches. On their Join Our Team page, they've got a Rebound Insights handbook. And when we have a look at this handbook, it's like this is where exceptional practitioners come to do their best work. And I just want to highlight two pages here specifically. Here's the standards that we hold ourselves to. These are their core values, right? And the language is very deliberate and intentional. And a quick little side quest here, Benny. The owner of Fixio, Damo, and the owner of Rebound, Andrew, are coaches on our team across both Elevate and the Academy that can coach you, the clinic owner, on how to establish your version of this in your clinic. But the standards we hold ourselves to are very intentional here. And then further on down this document, and you can have a look at this document, there are high standards on both sides. So we hold ourselves to a high standard, and we'll hold you to one too. And look at the language here. We foster a culture of responsibility. Own your caseload, your actions, and your outcomes. You need to show up present, positive, and prepared. And Lynch loves a good alliteration. You keep your team leader across your caseload. These are the standards, no surprises. How good is that? We trust you to handle challenges, come with solutions, be open to feedback. So the point here is not that you copy these, but you take inspiration from these and make explicit and obvious and objective what are the standards, what are the behaviours Ultimately, get your team to contribute to these if you can, but you must have them for your clinic because if you don't, you will almost certainly lose the culture that you haven't yet defined.

Ben Lynch: If you've got team members, JRB, like you mentioned, Henry Ford, the bottom 10%, there's always going to be, if you look at your group, someone that's really setting the pace. They are absolutely moving the ship forward. They're perhaps even introducing new standards into the team. And then you've always got someone there that is perhaps getting by or maybe holding back the rest of the team. And that's always a tricky one to navigate as you grow. How do you sort of coach the clinic owner through turning that person around? increasing the standards or the accountability to the current standards or thinking about sort of the next person as putting pressure on that person there because it is tricky when you've got someone that maybe you recruited a few years ago and now you've learned a lot of lessons. You've got a clarity about what you do want and don't want moving forward, but there's still this person on the bus that's holding you back. How do you work through that? What's your approach typically? Yeah.

Jack O'Brien: Honest conversations, honest communication, and frequent communication. So what we don't want necessarily is one-off conversations or a really big conversation. We want multiple frequent conversations. Mic Rizk talks about this often. And we can set that with the team members. Like, hey, what we're going to do is we're going to schedule the next two, three, four mentoring sessions. We're going to do it on a bit more of a frequent basis than we would usually because we've got a few things to cover. And we're going to unpack this together over time. So it de-threatens and de-risks one key conversation. And then I think we need to be really intentional about how we objectify behaviours. The team that the people plug in, Sara and Jess, have done a stellar job of setting up these frameworks where we review outputs, outcomes, behaviours, and attitudes. So the Uber framework. Outputs, outcomes, behaviours, and attitudes. And we measure or quantify those four departments, or four domains rather, and basically score one, two, or three. And one would be scoring it that you're not there yet. Two would be hitting your stride and hitting your stride is normal, right? A score of two is standard. That's average and that's okay. Like standard and average is good. Or three is like setting the pace. And so we can't all be threes, right? We can't all set the pace, but most of us would be hitting our stride. And then it's really important for us as leaders to Just say the thing and be honest and plain and obvious in our language and just go, Ben, in this particular behaviour, you're not there yet. And here's why I say that, because maybe you do the thing once a week, but we actually need to see it like four or five times a week. Hitting your stride would be doing this behaviour each day, every day. And if it's just once a week, let's pick something really obvious, right? Maybe it's showing up to work on time and being ready to start work at your start time. It's not like walking through the door at 8.01. If you start at eight o'clock, you probably need to walk through the door at 7.45, 7.50. And Ben, if you're coming on time one day a week, you're not there yet. That behaviour isn't what we expect of ourselves and of each other and what we've agreed on before. And so over the next couple of weeks, what I expect is for you to get to work on time four or five days out of five. That's really normal. That's what we expect around here. Is there anything that might come up in the way that is a challenge for that and how can we solve that together? But ultimately, we want to see you hitting your stride when it comes to these behaviours and setting the standard might look like getting there well before shift or sticking around afterwards and helping someone else or problem solving. But having that just direct conversation is a skill that clinic owners need to practice and there are plenty of communication resources out there and we coach clinic owners through this day in day out, it's our bread and butter. But regular, plainly obvious conversations.

Ben Lynch: I've often found a really good place to start the conversation when you just own it, that old Jocko Willink extreme ownership. And if you said, okay, this is entirely my fault as to why this person isn't in the place they need to be at and say, look, I realized that I probably haven't had the structure set up, or I haven't had the framework moving forward for us to support you to the best that we can. Maybe I've done a bunch of things, but I need to be humble here and say, what we're going to do is we're going to implement this new rhythm, as you're alluding to, JRB, moving forward. You referenced Nick there. Maybe we're going to increase the frequency, increase the duration, change the format or the structure of those sessions. And here's what it's going to look like moving forward. And written down again, very clearly, here are the expectations. And at the end of six weeks, six months, whenever it is, we're going to reassess how we're going with these things. It's very similar to inpatient care. You're writing some goals, some objectives and outcomes, and you're going to reassess at some point in the future. I think that matters a hell of a lot. That's what we're going to be covering a lot in this online summit with members because the pay conversation comes into it. You're on the back foot. Should I give them a pay rise? Well, they're not quite hitting all the expectations. Maybe they're hitting some. And then how do we actually have a framework, a clear framework into the future so that this is we're more proactive, that we've got a clear structure that we can guide them through it. The conversation becomes less I have to think on my feet, and it becomes, okay, we've got a very clear system. We remove some of that emotion moving forward, because that's the stress, right, is, oh, I don't know how to have this conversation. It feels a little awkward. I feel like we've kind of touched on it before, but haven't really done it. One of the things that clinic owners often tell us that's associated with this is, I wish practitioners in particular were more accountable. You know, we've had the conversation, they said yes, haven't really done it, or they've done it poorly, or they took too long to do it. So we're looking at, well, what is the rhythm that you have in the diary that acts as one part of the accountability framework, yeah? The sort of safety net.

Jack O'Brien: For sure. Can we talk about also, clinic owners find it tricky to have the difficult conversation and sometimes they delay it. But here's what we usually see when we delay conversations. And when you finally say the thing out loud, the receiver on the end of that conversation will often say, Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me this months ago? Why didn't you speak up? So because when we say maybe what is perceived as the hard thing or the difficult thing, there's usually three types of reactions. There's the, why didn't you tell me months ago? And that's usually pretty common. There may also be quite an outlier of response where the person blows up and says, oh, how dare you? You've hurt my feelings. I'm out. I don't like this anymore. that's probably a good thing because if they're going to blow up or clam up when accountability is applied that they've agreed to, then maybe they're not a good fit anyway. Or the third response will be someone who says, oh, thank you. How can I improve? What can I do to be better? I appreciate you telling me. Thanks for just saying the thing out loud and let's get on with solving it. Put it this way, the first response of like, why didn't you tell me? is probably a good thing because it speaks to me of someone who wants to hear feedback. The third response of someone who says like, great, let's solve it, awesome. They're open-minded, abundant, they take ownership. And the second response of someone who blows up, clams up, or walks out, well, they weren't a good fit anyway. So the point, clinic owner, is just have the conversation because of those three outcomes. They're all good outcomes.

Ben Lynch: You raise a really interesting point because I think inherently that is the fear for a lot of clinic owners in having the conversation is that it leads to a resignation. And in such a tight and tough recruitment market, they're like, how am I going to replace this person so quickly? Maybe I haven't had much success going to the market in the volume of applicants or the quality of applicants. And so, well, it's maybe better the devil you know, and you just kind of work with this. And it further emphasizes why recruitment is such a key activity for clinic owners. Whether you have plans to have a team of 30 or a team of three, it's one of those things that you need to perpetually have in your diary and be working on the assets and the resources and the reach and the marketing for it. Because the caliber of the people, you know, that's then going to show up in the caliber of healthcare that's delivered for your clients. It's another one for recruitment. We, we spoke at a recent internal training with all our consultants and we're talking about a number of issues, right? And I think we all got back to, well, The number one thing to do is actually do recruitment or have recruitment activities, focus on awareness and creating interest in the marketplace, adding value to folks so that when you do need to recruit, it's easier. It's never a piece of cake, but it's easier. And it actually allows you to have all of these other conversations internally when things aren't going particularly well. with a degree of confidence, because the underlying fear with a lot of these things, or whether it's the financial pressure of an underperformer trying to raise them up, is, hey, I have confidence I can go to the market and attract someone to come and work here. It just changes the whole state of being as a clinic owner when you feel like you could confidently replace somebody.

Jack O'Brien: I think this is the point, right? So much of this is about fear. So fear that I won't be able to replace them or fear that I'll, quote, lose the culture as we opened with. And so, you know, I want to come back and ask you, like, you know, yes, we talked about what is culture, but also how do we know what people want or what people need, right? Like we often have this fear, but people don't often say what they want or say what they need. And we, we think as clinic owners, we have to deliver something that hasn't been you know, verbalized or isn't expected. So, do you want to maybe speak to that a little bit? I've got a few thoughts, but what do you think?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, do you mean the, like, as in the clinic owners not sure what they want or need or the team members?

Jack O'Brien: Well, the team members don't know what they want. You know, the team members say, oh, when we grow, we might, you know, lose our soul or if we grow, the culture's going to change. But they don't know what they actually mean. How do we elicit that from them or how can we protect against that a little bit?

Ben Lynch: It's really good. Let's come back to the, I want to go to the Warren Buffett exercise that we did in Noosa a few years back. I'll come back to the Buffett one. It raises a good point, J.O.B., in that we're assuming, if the clinic owner said that to us, that the culture is quote-unquote good, or however they would characterize it. And that's where we kind of started with the self-reflection and the audit. They may perceive it as good, or however else you'd write it. But the team may not. There might be things sort of already underneath, bubbling underneath the surface. So, that's why I think we're trying to put as many objectives in place or make it more objective, excuse me, and have some level of measurement. I think that's the great framework of Uber because I think when you say culture, a lot of people naturally go to the behaviours and attitudes piece, the B and the A. Does it feel good? What are the vibes like around here? Not that it needs to be fluffy, but just, yeah, people are cohesive and pleasant. But also that it includes, well, are people actually doing their job, what they're employed to do? Are they doing the outputs consistently and to the standard we expect? And then assuming they are, it's more than likely they're achieving the outcome. So just to make sure that that's balanced. And so if you were assessing that, I think that's really important. Let me come to the Buffett example, and then we'll circle back to your question. We did this exercise at our team retreat. If you recall, there's a great quote from Warren Buffett, or he's certainly mentioned it many times over the years. He sort of said, you know, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and about five minutes to destroy it. And so they use that as a filter through which they make a lot of decisions. And so in this exercise, as a team, we actually spent five minutes destroying our business, sort of the reputational damage. It was framed up as write a hit piece on our business about its downfall. And a lot of it goes to like culture and client experience and all of these, um, sort of elements that are central to our service and our team. And in a way that, that sort of said, Hey, so often with culture, we're looking at what we, all the flashy, nice stuff we want. the values. And that's where actually I came up with that exercise of the anti-values to create your values as well. Like this sort of inverse, like invert the problem. What if instead we're not trying to preserve or maintain a culture, but we actually said, what's totally wrong with it now, or what could go wrong with it moving forward? Let's actually look at the beast in front of us and then go, What could we do here proactively to turn this around or prevent this from happening? So I think there's an element of that that I would actually embrace it. And you and I have talked about the toxic positivity, always looking at sort of the upside or the positive version of this, but actually inverting it and going to, what if this didn't work? What if it's not working right now? And let's actually look at it and say, what do we do proactively to sort of minimize the severity or likelihood of this happening?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, it's interesting. I love that example, because again, it's just kind of saying the quiet part out loud. It's like, what is worst case scenario here? What is the news article that we don't want to see? And so how do we therefore protect against that? But I'm thinking about you know, the practitioners that say, oh, I don't want us to grow because maybe we'll lose our personal connection. I won't get to see you as much or when we go multi-site, the team's dispersed a little bit more. And often, so an exercise that I like to connect it with clinic owners is like this. You know, sometimes clinic owners come to us and say, I need a little bit more work-life balance. Now, We all know that work-life balance is a myth. You're looking for harmony and you're looking for things that align, not that balance. But anyway, that's a separate conversation. But when it comes to this work-life balance things, I need some recreation time or I need some me time. Okay, cool. Yeah, you're human. That's okay. That's normal. Let's quantify what that looks like. Do you need four hours a night sitting on the couch with Netflix six nights a week? Do you need 24 hours of Netflix time to satisfy your me time requirements? Or will one night a week suffice? Or do you need two massages a week or will once a month suffice? Let's quantify what me time kind of feels like so that you can fill your cup sufficiently, but you don't need to overflow your cup. You just need to fill your cup. And the same is true when it comes to connecting with your team members. There's this fear that I'll lose touch with the owner if we grow. Okay, well, what would resemble staying in touch? Does it look like having our session once a fortnight or does it need to be once a week or does it need to be twice a week? Does it need to be in person or can it be over Zoom? You know, can we do a walk and talk and grab a coffee or sit in the office? You know, something that I've found really practical in both my clinic, which I was able to lead remotely and even now in Clinic Mastery, is really leaning into voice notes and voice memos and often video messages. because it conveys so much more of our humanness than simply a text message or really doubling down on emojis. You know, Shane Davis is one I've learned a lot from using the emojis. But how can we increase that connection? In my clinic, it would be a meaningful walking meeting once a fortnight, would be the point of connection. Where we used to rub shoulders in the lunchroom every day, I wasn't there as frequently. And we could still maintain the same depth of relationship simply in a once-a-fortnight walk and talk and coffee. It don't have to be physically present every fortnight. So it's finding and quantifying what actually matters.

Ben Lynch: And that's a question you're posing that you would ask of the practitioner, of the team member. what is super important to you about our connections? What part of it do you find most valuable? And rather than it be, oh, the fortnightly meeting for one hour is the thing that they're precious about, there's actually a component of that meeting that they find really valuable. Okay, and there might be another way for us to do that, different frequency, duration, style, format, location, whatever it might be. So we're just using our diagnostic skill set as therapists to actually just go, okay, well, this is maybe the symptom. How can I dive a little bit deeper and assess what's actually at the core, the root cause here or the key thing that they're trying to achieve and go, okay, are you okay if we explore different ways to achieve that? outcome, which might be, I really value it when I get your oversight on my caseload, and that's what happens in that fortnightly session. Okay, cool. All the other stuff doesn't really matter. I really love that. Well, we could find a way to do that asynchronous through Loan. So, I think that's where we want to identify the thing.

Jack O'Brien: Right. I think a lot of what we're talking about here is language, right? And speaking the language of our team and doing the things that have the greatest leverage. You can do small things with great impact or you can do large things that have very little impact. So what is the lever? What is the leverage? Gary Chapman's wonderful book and YouTube and TED talks on this stuff. It's the language of appreciation in the workplace. more commonly known as the five love languages. But for some folks, it might be physical touch. And so when you're present, it's like shake hands, you know, you pat them on the back, literally pat them on the back or sit down, whatever the case may be. If someone is a words of affirmation person, maybe it looks like handwriting a card. I know for us, I would often jump into their Cliniko diary and like pop something, pop a note on their diary or sneak in a treatment note or maybe it's a Slack message. If it's quality time, make sure that the time we spend together is quality, doesn't have to be quantity. But how can we make sure we speak the language of our team and the language of our culture in a way that's highly leveraged, highly aligned, and highly meaningful?

Ben Lynch: Me, Jack, I have this envelope with my name on it. This envelope contains Well, a couple of dozen post-it notes here with handwritten. Hey, look at that. So at our retreat, at our team retreat, we had these envelopes just scattered on a table. Everyone had to decorate their own. And it was an opportunity, especially for those folks that are words of affirmation, which I think everyone loves, you know, some reinforcement. you had the opportunity over a couple of days to write a handwritten note of gratitude, appreciation, celebration, and put it in someone's envelope. And that was a really lovely thing to leave that event with and reflect on and have something, because sometimes when you're here, acknowledgement in the moment. You tend to blush. You're sort of like, oh, I don't want the attention. And so to have it written allows you to read it and think about it later on. I just think about some of the remote clinics that are out there. You know, this doesn't have to be at a retreat. Is there a way once a quarter that you could do a version of this? Is it that you have a Slack channel called shout outs, you know, where you literally give a shout out to team members at any time really, but maybe ritually you do it at the end of a week. And people pile on into the Slack channel and they say, huge shout out to Bec for living out our core value of, we make it happen. She organized a taxi for this patient that came to the clinic and didn't have a ride home or someone bailed on them, you know, big kudos. And you get to see some of the behaviors, back to that Uber piece, that are happening. So part of that, how do I keep my finger on the pulse, especially as we're growing or multi-site or remote? What are some of the things that I can install so that I can see and celebrate, especially the things that are going well? I know we've spoken a lot about performance, maybe in the sense of the underperformer, but what are some of the things that I could set up to catch people doing good stuff and acknowledge it? What I would say, Jack, in working with so many clinic owners is, I understand the fear piece of it. I would do that version of the fear setting, which is kind of the Buffett exercise or the right, the hip piece, to just get it on paper and go, oh, it's not that bad. Because also, I think when you're so fearful of like losing this thing, you can actually prevent it from evolving into something better. And so I would just say, allow people to flourish. Of course, you've designed it to this point, but as you grow the team, give them the opportunity to add the culture and you're going to make mistakes. That's part of it. You'll always hear that, you know, so long as we learn, perhaps part of your culture, and we do this a lot, right, is a postmortem. You know, what happened? What went wrong? So long as we actually do learn. document the lesson, update the policy, update the procedure, whatever it may be. Perhaps that's part of our culture so that we know we can make mistakes in order to evolve what we've got into something better.

Jack O'Brien: Here's a really good summary from this episode. Fear is a signal for action. Fear is an uncertainty about a hypothetical future outcome. And so when you feel fear, super normal, right? Welcome to being human. But let fear be the signal for proactive development of your culture. I think that's a really key lesson for clinic owners. Have the fear. Think it through, really play it out, do the fear-setting exercise, and then take it to action. What am I going to put in place? What rhythm, what behavior, what standard will this fear result in? And therefore, fear can be a really positive motivator. Or we can turn fear into a positive motivator, but don't just sit in your fear and go, oh no, I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, duh, that is the point of fear you don't know. Take control so you have at least, maybe not full certainty, but a greater degree of certainty of what will happen as a result of your behaviors.

Ben Lynch: But a great note to end on, J.O.B., folks tuning in, you can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast s for the show notes here and all past episodes. There's a bunch there that are all about culture. So if this is topical for you right now, go and binge a few of the episodes. And as you just said, J.O.B, make sure you take action because it's all well and good to hear the things, get informed, but take action. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.